At the top of Turkey's agenda, there is the Kurdish Gambit.
The AKP government talks about a broad initiative to end the Kurdish problem, which has been materialized during the 25-years-old PKK terrorism.
Gambit is the best word to translate the Turkish equivalent "acilim" in this sense. It actually is a chess tactic in which a piece is sacrificed to gain an advantage. In today's Turkey, the AKP government wants to sacrifice the already-sacrificed, the victims of terrorism, to gain a political advantage in southeastern Turkey where the populution is mainly Kurdish, hoping that it will get them more votes in next general elections.
I believe that Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan is comfortable enough to play his last game bravely, even crazily. As he previously announced that he would run for the last time in the next elections, he wouldn't be risking a lot. He already did everything he targeted: Seizing the universities, the police, the judiciary... Curbing the power and the public image of the military... Syphoning a few more millions of dollars from the state vault... He has got everything now.
So it explains much about Erdogan's Kurdish Gambit. If you still don't understand what I mean, let me remind you the words of Siegbert Tarrasch, the Jewish-German chess genius:
"What is the object of playing a gambit opening? To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game!"
Erdogan's Kurdish Gambit is such a move. If he succeeds, he will end up his political career with a huge victory. If he can't succeed, he will still be remembered as a democracy icon in the eyes of the so-called liberals. And anyway he will gain some Kurdish votes...
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This is what I see when I look from the eyes of Erdogan and other AKP officials. However, the real picture is much more complicated, because what we have been living for the last 25 years was not a game.
PKK is in the terror lists of Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Even on Friday, a PKK bomb in a rubbish container has killed a civilian in Istanbul. And a police officer was stabbed to death by PKK militants in Adana just last night (below).
Erdogan, our King, may see these dead people as sacrificed pawns, but what about the rest of us? He may convince the relatives of thousands of PKK victims who died in 1980s or 1990s, but what about the ones who slained just yesterday? What about today and tomorrow?
As long as PKK is not unconditionally disarmed and DTP, its political extention, keeps refusing to condemn terrorism, the Kurdish Gambit is doomed to be a failure. Without creating the conditions to satisfy the Turkish people, any government may collapse after such a stupid gambit.
As a last word, let Emanuel Lasker, another German chessmaster, tell the truth about gambits vs. mature solutions:
"The delight in gambits is a sign of chess youth... In very much the same way as the young man, on reaching his manhood years, lays aside the Indian stories and stories of adventure, and turns to the psychological novel, we with maturing experience leave off gambit playing and become interested in the less vivacious but withal more forceful manoeuvres of the position player."
